Nike : Brand Marketing Assignment Sample

• Subject Name : Marketing

Research on Content Marketing Brand: Nike

As their spokespersons, Nike has some of the leading athletes. To name a few, Christiano Ronaldo, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and more. It earned the top spot in sports and advertisement by placing these big names ahead of their products. Personification through a reputed sportsperson is an excellent way to build a strong brand. Like many other brands, Nike has been using storytelling as it is an effective method for communicating core values. One can easily notice that instead of the product, the brand’s content does most of the talking.

Nike has always kept its customers real close. Across all social media platforms, it has displayed an approachable and friendly attitude to the customers. It listens to the queries of its dissatisfied customers and responds to them. In most cases, it has provided resolutions to them on time. Keeping their customers happy and engaged is an essential part of the growth of its campaigns and products.

Nike makes people believe in their goals and dreams. It does this by telling stories of real-life warriors, i.e., athletes, that resonate with their followers. The brand’s content has always been inspirational and stunning, that encourages people to start working out - for achieving a healthy lifestyle or/and their ambitions.

Facebook: Nike’s campaign, Equality, was launched during Black History Month. The campaign featured tennis star, Serena Williams and basketball star, LeBron James in the brand’s 90-second video. In just an hour of its launch on Facebook, the campaign collected over 8.8k views and was shared by 400+ viewers.

Twitter: Along with Facebook, Nike took similar initiatives for its campaigns on Twitter as well. To engage with its followers and to drive traffic, it started taking part in conversations with them. Between May 4 and 6, it saw a peak reply rate during the launch of its campaign, ‘Breaking2’. Moreover, it also ran several ads that were targeted at several locations. This campaign was a major success (Danziger, 2018). Other sports brands also engaged in conversations. Dream crazy was another campaign launched in the year 2018 and featured women athletes who faced their challenges to achieve their dreams. 2019 was declared as the year for women and it launched ‘Dream Crazier’, which was a supplement to its previous ad. It was only one of the campaigns that demonstrated a true sight over the hardships faced by women athletes. Dream Crazier gained a huge success and was well-received by social media users globally. During a campaign, Nike becomes extremely active on social media. It tweets nearly 20k times, nearly 17 times a day and replies and retweets as well. Such engagement with its followers allows it to gain more attention to its potential followers. The brand’s video on 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup crossed 25 million views and this was its most engaging tweet. Nike is one of those brands that use Twitter as a way to resolve the queries of its customers. NikeSupport is its dedicated Twitter handle for delivering customer services.

Instagram: Nike may not be consistent in posting its content, but it is one of the most followed brands on Instagram. It’s published content mostly includes photos which comprise nearly 60% and receives the most engagement rate as well. However, the post with the highest engagement is a video with more than 20 million views. Nike uses hashtags such as ‘#justdoit’ and ‘#nike’ in all the posts. Moreover, for each campaign or a product launch, they come out with a hashtag similar to it.

Brand Marketing: Nike - Task 2

One of the most effective mediums through which brands communicate their ads to a wide horizon of audiences is films. The example campaign chosen for this task is the collaboration of Coca Cola and the action thriller, 007. The brand is known to run hidden camera campaigns and its customers had always loved them. They are extremely effective and viral and encourage a user to share them, which is why its campaigns went viral in just a couple of hours. The media used was YouTube as the entire campaign was shot and released through it, which ultimately went viral on Facebook and other social media channels as well.

As the 50th anniversary of James Bond films was just around the corner, Coca Cola came up with an idea to give away free exclusive movie tickets for the launch of Skyfall. To do this strategically, they let the real audiences engage by allowing them to participate in the promotional campaign (Kusovský, n.d). The message was ‘Unlock the 007 in you’ and one can be Bond himself if he drinks Coke Zero. The campaign was set up in Antwerp Central Station in Belgium. The medium used was staff members and a vending machine.

So, when a commuter comes up to the vending machine, buys a Coke Zero, and takes his first sip, a message appears on the machine followed by a timer. It clearly instructs the person to reach the other end of the platform in 70 seconds. At the start of this campaign, a female violinist, staff member, is seen playing Coca Cola’s theme song. She immediately starts to play the James Bond movie theme just when a customer arrives at the vending machine to buy refreshment (Traxler, 2016). The timer starts shortly after the customer enters his name on the vending machines touch screen panel. And then, it is all about rushing to the next platform. Right there, is another vending machine along with the crew. Upon reaching, all he had to do is to mumble Bond’s theme song and grab the tickets from the machine. Nothing comes easy and while the message may look simple, the challenge wasn’t!

The campaign was a huge success as it received over 4 million views in just a few days of its release on YouTube. Its success wasn’t just visible on online media only but it also racked up an excellent response in offline media such as newspapers and TV. The vending machine adventure helped Coca Cola gain almost 500,000 new followers on Facebook. This campaign was like a magnet and drew gigantic attention from the public. People who were a huge fan of James Bond eventually became a fan of Coca Cola too.

The concept, ‘unlock the 007 in you’, was delivered seamlessly and Coca Cola deployed a creative and an out of the box campaign. It had a direct impact on both the potential customers as well as the existing customers. It did a great job in including unsuspecting individuals’ participation in its ads as not only it impacted brand awareness but also increased its sales soon after the launch of the campaign. Each element used in the film was integrated as it triggered a potential customer to buy the product. Three things were happening in the ad simultaneously, brand awareness of Coca Cola, the promotion of its product ‘Diet Coke, and the promotion of the launch of the new Bond flick. Another good example of why it worked at the train station is that commuters are mostly in a hurry and it is okay to take a short break to have a refreshment.

References for Brand Marketing: Nike

Danziger, N. P., 2018. Nike’s new Consumer Experience Distribution Strategy Hits the Ground Running. [Online]. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/12/01/nikes-new-consumer-experience-distribution-strategy-hits-the-ground-running/#39f2891cf1d0 [Accessed on May 6, 2020].

Kusovský, D. F. O., n.d. Viral campaign as an effective marketing promotion instrument. Marketing Identity, 40. Available at: https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=477331 [Accessed on May 6, 2020].

Ravi, K., 2019. 6 Ways nike built a strong brand on social media. [Online]. Available at: https://blog.unmetric.com/nike-social-media [Accessed on May 6, 2020].

Traxler, A. (2016). Unlock the 007 in you (Doctoral dissertation, uniwien). [Online]. Available at: https://othes.univie.ac.at/42510/ [Accessed on May 6, 2020].

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